Summary

In this chapter we looked at the Visual SourceSafe 2005 architecture. It is composed of three main components:

The server is responsible for storing the SourceSafe database and services such as the LAN booster service and the XML Web service for remote connections. The main server application is the Visual SourceSafe Administrator used to manage the SourceSafe databases.

The SourceSafe database is structured in a series of folders and files that store database data, user, and configuration information.

On the client side, the main stand-alone GUI application is the Visual SourceSafe Explorer. For batch scripts SourceSafe offers a separate command-line application.

For Visual Studio development there are two SourceSafe source control plug-ins: the LAN plug-in and the Internet plug-in. These plug-ins use the SourceSafe LAN and Internet server services and are used using the Visual Studio source control commands.

Depending on the location, SourceSafe users can be local or remote. To connect to the SourceSafe database they can use one of the following network configurations:

The remote access configurations must be secured using security policies and firewall filters.